The invention relates to an apparatus for detecting physical abnormalities in milk by subjecting the milk to irradiation by one or more lights of colors, red, green and blue, measuring the intensity of light reflected or background light from the irradiated light, and processing the measured data with a computer. The invention further relates to a milking robot which is provided with the apparatus.
Such an apparatus is known from Netherlands patent application NL-1004980 (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,030). The presence of particular substances in the milk can be detected by means of a known color sensor measuring system. A disadvantage thereof is that a user often has to make a further analysis of the milk condition on the basis of the detected substances. Moreover, the results are not very reliable.
The invention aims at further developing and improving such an apparatus. According to the invention, this is achieved by programming the computer to recognize and identify one or more diagnostic indicators based on a comparison of values derived from the measured light intensities reflected directly and derived from the milk being irradiated by the light source or sources.
The values derived from the measured light intensities may be measured may be said measured values themselves, but preferably values corrected by means of the computer are determined and used. For that purpose the computer is programmed to determine corrected values as said values derived from the measured light intensities, the correction compensating for the influence of the temperature of the light source or of the milk or both on the measured intensities. The fact is that particularly the temperature of the light source, such as a LED, has proved to influence the measured values of the intensities. The measured values may be converted by the computer to measured values related to a temperature of, for example, 25xc2x0 C.
The computer may further be programed to determine corrected values as said values derived from the measured light intensities, the correction compensating for differences between the light sensors used. The fact is that different specimens of a light sensor may have mutually differing measuring characteristics. By means of the correction , undesired temperatures influences or differences between the sensors used or both such factors are thus compensated for. In this manner the reliability of the apparatus is enhanced.
Reference values may be used which are fixed values (such as those of reference milk). However, preferably dynamic values are used, such as average values over the last milkings of a group of animals. Preferably the computer uses information in relation to the identity of the animals that provided the analyzed milk. The diagnostic possibilities stored comprise syndromes for the animal from which the relevant milk has been provided, milk quality indications and the presence of particular substances in the milk.